The timeline of children's rights in the United Kingdom includes a variety of events that are both political and grassroots in nature.

The UK government maintains a position that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is not legally enforceable and is hence 'aspirational' only, although a 2003 ECHR ruling states that, "The human rights of children and the standards to which all governments must aspire in realising these rights for all children are set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child."Extract from Sahin v Germany, Grand Chamber judgment of the ECHR, 8 July 2003, as quoted in "4. Memorandum from Allan Levy QC and Peter Newell", Joint Committee on Human Rights. Retrieved 18 July 2008. Eighteen years after ratification, the four Children's Commissioners in the UK (including those for the three devolved administrations) have united in calling for adoption of the Convention into domestic legislation, making children's rights recognised and legally binding.(2008) UK Commissioners' Special Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child . UK Commissioners. p 34. Retrieved 29 June 2008.

Opponents of children's rights often raise the objection that rights must entail responsibilities.Travis, A. "Children's jail staff given wider powers of restraint", The Guardian, London, 19 June 2007.. The children's rights movement asserts rather that children have rights which adults, states and the government have a responsibility to uphold.Adtunji, J. "Prisons: Child secure units still use adult restraint methods, says inspector", The Guardian, London, 9 July 2008.. Overall, a 2008 report stated that there had been no improvement in children's rights in the UK since 2002.(2008) UK Commissioners' Special Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child . UK Commissioners. p 4. Retrieved 29 June 2008. Warning that there is a "widely held fear of children and young people" in the UK, the report says: "The incessant portrayal of children as thugs and yobs" not only reinforces the fears of the public but also influences policy and legislation."(2008) UK Commissioners' Special Report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child . UK Commissioners. p 33. Retrieved 29 June 2008. The report does not address the question of the degree to which the fear of uncontrolled children in the UK is justified.

The UNCRC defines children, for the purposes of the Convention, as persons under the age 18, unless domestic legislation provides otherwise. In that spirit, this timeline includes as children all those below the UK age of majority, which was 21 until 1970 when it was reduced to 18. Although the Crown Dependencies of the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey are not constitutionally part of the UK, the British government is responsible for their external affairs and therefore for their international treaty obligations, so this timeline includes references to matters in those dependencies.

Pre-19th century

Timeline of pre-19th century events related to Children's Rights in the UK and the countries that preceded it in chronological order Date Parties Event Image Pre-16th century The care of orphans was particularly commended to bishops and monasteries during the Middle Ages. Many orphanages practised a form of "binding-out" in which children, as soon as they were old enough, were given as apprentices to households to ensure their support and their learning an occupation. Common law maintaining the King's Peace was administered by the Court of Common Pleas (England) dealing with civil cases between parties by ordering the fine of debts and seizure of the goods of outlaws. Following the Peasants' Revolt, constables in England were authorised under a 1383 statute to collar vagabonds and force them to show their means of support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol. Under a 1494 statute, vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added.Heinze, Rudolph W. (1976). The proclamations of the Tudor kings, p. 118. Cambridge University Press. The assumption was that vagabonds were unlicensed beggars. January 1561 Scotland The national Church of Scotland set out a programme for spiritual reform, setting the principle of a school teacher for every parish church and free education. This was provided for by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland, passed in 1633, which introduced a tax to pay for this programme.Records of the Parliament of Scotland official website. Retrieved 25 July 2008. 1367–1607 Ireland Suppression of the Brehon Laws which enumerated the rights and responsibilities of fostered children, their birth-parents and foster-parents.Bryant, Sophie pp37-55 : Liberty, order and law under native Irish rule The Brehon Law concept of family was eroded and the Gaelic tradition of fosterage lost. It was ultimately replaced by the State controlled Poor Law system. 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law The Poor Law was the social security system operating in England and Wales from the 16th century until the establishment of the Welfare State in the 20th century. The Impotent poor was a classification of poverty used to refer to those poor considered deserving of poor relief; a vagrant was a person who could work, but preferred not to. The law did not distinguish between the impotent poor and the criminal, so both received the same punishments. The law provided for "the putting out of children to be apprentices". 17th century Where an unmarried mother concealed the death of her baby, she was presumed guilty of infanticide unless she could prove that the baby was born dead. This requirement that the defendant prove her innocence was a reversal of the normal practice of requiring the prosecution to prove the defendant's guilt. Women were acquitted of this charge if they could demonstrate that they had prepared for the birth of the baby, for example by acquiring bedding. Retrieved 23 August 2008. In 1678 children aged 10 were deemed able to engage in consensual sex. 1732–1744 Bastardy In 1732, a woman pregnant with a "bastard" was required to declare the fact and to name the father. In 1733, the putative father became responsible for maintaining his illegitimate child; failing to do so could result in gaol. The parish would then support the mother and child, until the father agreed to do so, whereupon he would reimburse the parish – although this rarely happened. In 1744, a bastard took the 'settlement' of its mother (under the Poor Law, a person's place of origin or later established residence, being the parish responsible for the person if destitute) regardless of where the child was actually born. Previously, a bastard took settlement from its place of birth. The mother was to be publicly whipped.Higginbotham, P. "Workhouses - the Story of Workhouses." Retrieved 25 July 2008. 1739 The Foundling Hospital Established in London by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram"Thomas Coram: 1668-1751" . Retrieved 7/25/08. as a home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." Children were seldom taken after they were twelve months old. On reception they were sent to wet nurses in the countryside, where they stayed until they were about four or five years old. At sixteen girls were generally apprenticed as servants for four years; at fourteen, boys became apprentices in varying occupations for seven years."Victorian London - Health and Hygiene - Hospitals - Foundling Hospital". Retrieved 25 July 2008. 1779 The Penitentiary Act Drafted by Prison reformer John Howard, the Act introduced state prisons as an alternative to the death penalty or transportation. The prison population had risen after the US Declaration of Independence, because the American Colonies had been used as the destination for transported criminals. Howard's 1777 report had identified appalling conditions in most of the prisons he inspected. The Howard League for Penal Reform emerged as a result. 1795 Speenhamland system An amendment to the Poor Law, named after a meeting at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, Berkshire, where the local magistrates or squirearchy devised the system as a means to alleviate hardship caused by a spike in grain prices. Families were paid extra to top up wages to a set level, which varied according to the number of children and the price of bread. For example, if bread was 1s 2d a loaf, the wages of a family with two children was topped up to 8s 6d. If bread rose to 1s 8d the wages were topped up to 11s 0d. The system aggravated the underlying causes of poverty, allowing employers (often farmers) to pay below subsistence wages, because the parish made up the difference to keep their workers alive. Low incomes remained unchanged and the poor rate contributors subsidised the farmers, so that landowners sought other means of dealing with the poor e.g. the workhouse. The Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834 called the Speenhamland System a "universal system of pauperism." 1796 Thomas Spence Publication of The Rights of Infants by the revolutionary philosopher.

19th century